Asians, Blacks and Intolerance

Norman Matloff

San Francisco Chronicle Op-Ed

May 20, 1997

It is no secret that many Asian immigrants harbor racist attitudes
toward African Americans and Latinos. What is less noticed is that
Asian American community activists are ignoring the problem, doing
nothing proactive to deal with immigrant racial intolerance.

There is a plethora of missed opportunities. Asian-language
community-affairs television programs regularly inform viewers how to
avail themselves of social services, but how much time has been devoted
to educating viewers about healthy racial attitudes? Many immigrant
entrepreneurs are unwilling to hire black employees. Why aren't Asian
community organizations developing campaigns to encourage Asian
employers to hire blacks?

In too many cases, the activists themselves have unhealthy attitudes.
In the newsletter of the Oakland chapter of the Organization of Chinese
Americans, editor Peter Eng opined: ``Chinese-Americans will need to
separate and distance ourselves from other ethnic immigrant groups" and
suggested that Latino immigration was a burden to society. Even Henry
Der, former head of Chinese for Affirmative Action, whose support of
non-Asian minorities is heartfelt, recently expressed this notion: ``We
could even take more Chinese immigrants...But that is not going to
happen, because Chinese immigrants are broadstroked" with all other
immigrant groups.

The Asian activists compound the problem by absolving the immigrants of
blame for their racist attitudes. The immigrants, we are told, pick up
racist views from the American media. Yet this is at odds with the fact
that Asian immigrant prejudice toward African Americans and Latinos is
more widespread and at a higher intensity than amoug U.S. natives.
Quynh Tran, in her Stanford University study of Vietnamese immigrant
high school students, found that students who grew up in the United
States were less prejudiced toward blacks than were students who
immigrated at a later age.

Given Asian prejudice against blacks, it is not surprising that many
blacks resent Asian Americans. Many blacks targeted Korean American
businesses during the 1992 L.A. riots. However, blacks' attitudes toward
Koreans seem to be less negative than the attitudes of Koreans toward
blacks, according to a University of Southern California study.

Asian activists are often exacerbating the situation, sometimes with
Latino groups. Elaine Kim, a Korean-American UC Berkeley professor, has
written that a major Latino organization suggested to her [actually to
Korean community activist Bong Huan Kim--NM] that Asians and
Latinos work together against blacks in an Oakland redistricting proposal.
And an Asian/Latino coalition is suing Oakland, claiming it awards too many
city contracts to black-owned firms.

Supervisor Mabel Teng, while on the Community College Board, boasted that
due to her lobbying, no high-level Asian administrators were laid off during
the 1994 fiscal crisis. But several black administrators were let go, and
Teng was silent.

When welfare reform was enacted, great concern was expressed about its
potentially heavy impact on the native-born poor, many of them blacks
who are functionally illiterate and without job skills. But Asian
activist groups succeeded in shifting the spotlight to the provisions
regarding immigrants. The press has largely forgotten about how the
native-born poor will cope.

Asian activists should devote some of their considerable energy to
developing more sensitivity toward other minorities. The saying from
the '60s is apt: ``If you are not part of the solution, you are part of
the problem."

Norman Matloff teaches at UC Davis and is former chairman of the affirmative
action committee. A speaker of Chinese, he has been active in the Chinese
immigrant community for 20 years.